Wearing A Mask Or Disguise To Evade Police – Penal Code Section 185
It is illegal in Los Angeles County and throughout California to wear a mask or disguise in the process of committing a crime.
You don't really see this Penal Code Section charged very often because usually, the prosecutors charge the underlying crime, but they are permitted to charge California Penal Code Section 185 if they can show that somebody committed a crime, and while they were committing that crime, they tried to disguise their identity.
Another angle they can use in this Penal Code Section is if, after a crime is committed, the person puts on some disguise to hide their identity.
I see this a lot in places where people are committing robberies in various locations. They will come in with a ski mask, or I had one case where someone came in with one of those Scream masks from that movie. I've had other instances in which people put disguises on when they commit the crime, all to ensure they cannot be identified during or after the crime. This is where the Penal Code Section snaps in.
Defenses To PC 185
One defense is you're not wearing any mask or disguise. This defense could be asserted if somebody was not wearing a mask but had glasses on or something else that the prosecutors were trying to claim was used to disguise their face.
Obviously, the other defense would be that you were not the one who committed the crime or that you were not committing a crime at the time.
A lot of this is fact-driven, meaning it will depend on the facts of the particular criminal case that you're charged with, whether or not you're committing a crime or wearing some sort of mask or disguise.
The apparent reasoning behind people wearing masks and disguises when they commit crimes is that none of the witnesses can identify who was there when the crime was committed. Many locations now have video.
So, when people commit crimes, if they're wearing a mask, they figure that the video will capture them, but by wearing a mask or disguise they can avoid this.
This does not always work out because a lot of what I'm seeing now is that when people commit robberies and wear masks or disguises, the police pick up other things on their clothes that can identify them.
I've seen many people – once the police get hot on their trail – execute a search warrant for their house – they'll take all their clothes and everything to try to match it up with the person who is supposedly committing the robbery.
The more things they can match, the more circumstantial evidence they can put together to show the person is wearing the mask or disguise and violated Penal Code Section 185, and they will charge them with robbery if that's the case.
Witness Identification in Penal Code 185 Cases
Another big thing that law enforcement does when people wear masks or disguises to commit a crime is to look at the person's height and weight and ask witnesses to see if they can identify their voice.
I've done live line-ups before where the police ask each of the six people in the line-up to say a phrase—usually a phrase that might have been used during the robbery.
So, if someone wears a mask or disguise to commit a crime, it's not necessarily true that they cannot be identified. The police have all kinds of ways to identify them.
Another thing they'll do is get fingerprint and DNA experts. I've had a lot of these robbery cases where people were wearing masks when they came in and ended up touching something, and they got DNA. So the combination of DNA, the person's height or weight matching, and if someone can match a voice—this is what it comes down to in these cases where people are wearing masks and disguises.
So, if you're charged with a crime and there's an identification issue because they obviously didn't have your face during the robbery, you want to come and sit down with somebody like me.
Determining Defense Strategy
I'll look at all the circumstantial evidence that they have, and then we'll determine whether they can really prove that you were involved in this particular crime. A lot of times, the police and prosecutors have problems charging people with Penal Code Section 185 if they can't identify the actual person.
They'll need to execute search warrants. If they can find the mask and identify it with the person, combined with other evidence, they can prove this Penal Code Section 185 violation and charge the person with a different underlying crime.
So, it depends on the evidence in the case, and you need to discuss it with your criminal defense attorney. I get you in; we go over everything. We lay out what evidence they have and what evidence they don't have.
Then, we have to make an educated guess as to whether you could win the case at a jury trial. I've been doing this for twenty-five years and have over 200 jury trials, so that helps get a feel for what the prosecutors could prove in a Penal Code Section 185 violation where they claim you were wearing a mask during some crime.
